The Ship of Brides(55)
Author: Jojo Moyes

She sat down, nudged her. ‘This’ll make you laugh. He’d already decided he wanted to ask me. He’d got Dad’s permission. And he’d bought a ring. Oh, I’m not wearing it now,’ she explained. ‘Fingers are too swollen. Anyway, he decides Wednesday’s the day – it’s his last but one day before the end of his shore leave, and he turns up, nervous, his boots shining like mirrors and his hair slicked. He’s got it all planned in his head. He’s going to go down on one knee and make the one romantic gesture of his life.’

‘Wasted on you,’ said Frances.

‘Well, he knows that now,’ Margaret grinned, ‘so, anyway, he gets to ours, and he knocks on the door, and just as he’s stepping in, I’m screaming at Daniel about him not leaving all his clothes on the floor because I’m darned if I’m going to run around after him like Mum did. Poor old Joe’s standing in the hallway and me and Dan are going at each other hammer and tongs. Then Dad runs in, yelling that the cows have got out. Joe’s standing there, still in shock at the sight of me swearing like a navvy, and Dad grabs him and says, “Come on, lad. Look alive,” and hauls him out to the back.’

Margaret leant back. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it was chaos. There’s around forty of them out and they’ve brought down one of the fences, and there’s two tearing up what’s left of Mum’s garden, so Dad’s beating them with a stick, tears falling down his face, trying to prop up Mum’s flowers. There’s Colm racing down the track in the truck, horn blaring, trying to head off the ones stampeding towards the road. Liam’s on one of the horses, acting like John Wayne. And then there’s me and Joe trying to corner the rest of them in the shed.’

She looked around the faces opposite her. ‘Ever seen a frightened cow, girls?’ She lowered her voice. ‘They shit like you’ve never seen. And where they’re wheeling around, it’s going everywhere. Poor old Joe is covered with it, top to toe, his beautiful shoes, everything.’

‘How disgusting,’ said Jean, raising a small smile.

‘And then, to add insult to injury, our biggest girl decides to make a break for it, and she goes straight over him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s no pushover – but the way she went into him it was as if he wasn’t even there. Bam.’ She mimed falling backwards.

Even Margaret, supposedly immune to the farmyard smell, had held her nose when she helped him get up, tried to wipe him down. She had thought he was swearing, but eventually realised he was saying, ‘The ring, the ring.’ The two of them had spent almost half an hour on their hands and knees in the cowshed, trying to find Joe’s token of everlasting devotion in the slurry.

‘And you – you still wear it?’

‘Cow dung included. To me that’s part of the romance.’ Then, as Jean’s hand went to her mouth, ‘Oh, Jean! Of course I washed it before I put it on. I had to do the same for Joe. My first evening as his fiancée was spent washing and ironing his uniform so that he wouldn’t get into trouble back at base.’

‘Stan asked me while we were at a dance,’ said Jean. ‘I reckon I was the youngest there – I was still fifteen. But it was lovely. I was wearing a blue shantung silk two-piece, it belonged to my friend Polly, and he said I was the most beautiful girl in the room. He’d had a few, but when they struck up with “You Made Me Love You” he turned to his mate and said, “This is the girl I’m going to marry. You hear that?” And then he said it louder. And I made out I was dead embarrassed but, to be honest, I really liked it.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ said Frances, smiling.

‘He was the first person to tell me he loved me.’ Her eyes glittered with tears. ‘No one ever told me that. Not my mum. Never even met my dad.’ She pushed her hair off her face. ‘Nope. I got nothing back there, nothing. He’s the best man I ever met.’

They had sat, in near silence, for almost half an hour more, Margaret calling to the traders to come closer, to take these back, bring those over. She had bought, at ridiculous cost, two necklaces for Letty, telling herself they would be a lovely gift, knowing it was a feeble attempt to atone. As the heat grew fiercer, and the sun moved across, taking their vantage-point out of the shade, she thought about moving. But no entertainments had been planned for the day, owing to the former expectation that they would be ashore, and the thought of them bickering with each other in the little dormitory was unbearable.

She was squinting listlessly at a small propeller craft humming towards them, the naval cap of its skipper, the clumsy grey shapes on board, watching them become increasingly distinct at it drew closer. She heard exclamations along the length of the ship as other women realised what it was.

‘Girls!’ she yelled. ‘It’s the post! We’ve got post!’

An hour later, they sat in the canteen, the normally cabbage-scented air now thick with anticipation, as a Red Cross officer collected all mail to be sent and distributed small bundles of letters from a trestle table at the end. The announcement of each name was greeted with squeals from the recipient and her friends, as if she was being called up to collect an award, rather than correspondence. Around them the windows were propped open to allow the sea breezes to penetrate the room. The light bounced off them, echoing the glimmering ocean low.

Jean had been among the first called to the table: her impressive seven letters from Stan had restored some of her vitality. She had handed them to Frances, who read them aloud in her low, sonorous voice, while Jean puffed nervously at a cigarette. ‘Did you hear that?’ she kept interrupting. ‘My name tattooed on his right arm. In two colours! And it hurt like buggery.’

Margaret and Frances had exchanged a glance. ‘And,’ Frances continued, ‘he’s won four pounds in a boxing match. He says the other fellow’s idea of boxing involved trying to block Stan’s punches with his nose.’

‘Hear that?’ Jean nudged Margaret. ‘Trying to block punches with his nose!’ If her laughter was a little too high to suggest genuine mirth, no one said anything. It was enough that she was laughing at all.

Later Frances would confide that she had left out several paragraphs: those that warned Jean to ‘behave herself’, and the story of a sweetheart deserted by one of his friends once he heard she had been ‘playing fast and loose’.